While some Arizona voters remain focused on last November’s election, dozens of candidates for state and federal offices in 2022 are already vying for voters’ attention and their dollars, even though early voting for primary contests won’t begin for 13 months.
The November 2022 General Election will bring major changes to Arizona’s executive branch, as Gov. Doug Ducey is termed out and Attorney General Mark Brnovich has announced his run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Mark Kelly. There will also be a new Arizona Secretary of State as current officeholder Katie Hobbs is seeking the governorship.
Hobbs announced her candidacy earlier this month, but faces a tough Democratic primary race with Marco Lopez Jr., a former mayor of Nogales and prior Chief of Staff for U.S. Customs & Border Protection. They currently have two other primary challengers, Steven “Paco” Noon Jr. and Trista DiGenova-Chang, although State Rep. Aaron Lieberman is rumored to be considering tossing his hat in the ring.
On the Republican side, 10 candidates are currently vying to get past the Aug. 2 primary and onto the Nov. 8 General Election ballot. Among the first to announce their candidacy were Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee and Karrin Taylor Robson, who is the secretary of the Arizona Board of Regents.
Former Phoenix-area television news anchor Kari Lake has also announced a run for the Republican nomination, along with Ameer El Bey, Kelly Garett, David Hoffman, Michael Pavlock Jr., Julian Tatka, Paola “Z” Tulliani, and Wayne Warren.
Meanwhile, two Libertarians -Bill Moritzky and Steve Remus- have already filed a Statement of Interest for governor.
With Hobbs giving up her position as Secretary of State, the Arizona Republican Party is pushing hard to take back the office in 2022. Five candidates, including Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita and Rep. Mark Finchem, are expected to be on the primary ballot, along with Remo Paul, Mark Sarchet, and Wade Wilson.
In addition, Rep. Shawnna Bolick, also a Republican, is expected to announce her candidacy for Secretary of State at a June 21 “Campaign Kick-off” event.
Whichever Republican clears the primary will likely take on Democrat Adrian Fontes, the former Maricopa County Recorder. Fontes informally announced on social media last week his interest in running for Secretary of State.
One of the state’s most influential offices is up for grabs in 2022 now that Brnovich is running for Congress. One Democrat -Diego Rodriguez- has filed a Statement of Interest, as have two Republicans- Andrew Gould and Tiffany Shedd.
Gould recently stepped down from the Arizona Supreme Court to announce his candidacy.
The U.S. Senate seat currently held by Mark Kelly is expected to be one of the most contested federal races in 2022, although the Republican primary to determine who takes on Kelly will be just as intense.
In addition to Brnovich, the Republican nomination is being sought by 15 other candidates as of June 12. They include recently retired Arizona Adjutant General Michael “Mick” McGuire and Fortune 500 executive Jim Lamon.
Other Republicans vying for the nomination are Wendy Acuna, Craig Brittain, David Buechel, Dan Butierez Sr., Ronald Coale, Eric Corbett, Mark Fisher, Vlad Hermann, Josh McElroy, Rob Paveza, Thomas Tripp, and Chad Yosick. They are joined by Kelly Garett, who also filed a Statement of Interest for governor.
But the Republican primary for Kelly’s seat in Congress could get even more crowded, as Blake Masters of the Thiel Foundation and Christopher Landau, who recently served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, are rumored to be considering a run.
As for Kelly, he appears to have only one Democratic Party challenger at this time- Trista DiGenova-Chang, who also filed a Statement of Interest for Governor.
Independent candidates still have several months to submit a Statement of Interest, which must be filed by a candidate before collecting the petition signatures needed to get on the ballot. However, a Statement of Interest is not a formal declaration of candidacy – which is done by filing a nomination paper.
Arizona has received the prestigious “Gold Shovel” award from Area Development Magazine, a leading site selection publication, for the state’s “success in terms of new job creation and company capital investment” in 2020.
In addition, TSMC’s announced $12 billion investment to build a semiconductor fabrication facility in Phoenix was named one of six “Manufacturing Projects of the Year.” Arizona saw economic development wins across the state in 2020, even against the context of a global pandemic. In addition to TSMC, the 2020 projects include:
• Global Energy Solutions, a producer of lithium-battery supply chain materials that announced a new facility in Eloy, resulting in 176 projected new jobs and $101 million in capital investment;
• Commercial Metals Company, which is investing more than $300 million to build a state-of-the-art steel producing facility in Mesa. The facility’s advanced technology will make it one of the most efficient and environmentally-friendly in the world, while employing more than 180 people;
• PMG Companies, which is opening an advanced manufacturing plant in Lake Havasu, resulting in more than 260 jobs and a $20 million investment;
• Ball Corporation (Red Bull), which is building a manufacturing facility in Glendale leading to the creation of 145 jobs and more than $235 million in investment;
• And Zoom Communications, which will establish a technology hub in Phoenix with 250 employees and a $11 million investment.
A consumer fraud lawsuit filed last year by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AGO) against Google was the subject of an important court ruling last week, when a Maricopa County judge appointed to review some of the global tech giant’s internal documents issued an advisory ruling in support of sealing some records.
The June 7 advisory ruling was made by Judge Sally Schneider, who was appointed to serve as a Special Master to review various documents which Google wants sealed or redacted. This keeps Judge Timothy Thomason, who will preside over the jury trial on the AGO’s complaint, from coming into contact with documents which may not be admissible in the case.
Attorneys for the parties will be back in Maricopa County Superior Court on June 22 for a status conference with Thomason at which time he is expected to accept Schneider’s advisory ruling. No trial date has been set yet in the case, but Thomason has already scheduled two pretrial conferences for later this year.
The lawsuit authorized by Attorney General Mark Brnovich in May 2020 alleges Google violated Arizona’s Consumer Fraud Act by misleading users of its apps about the company’s data collection and location tracking policies.
National attention -and that of Brnovich- was first drawn to the company’s tracking policies after the Associated Press published an article about the issue in 2018. Public records show more than 250 exhibits were shared between Google and the AGO within six months of the lawsuit being filed.
Since then, several of the documents have been released to the public, providing a better understanding of the steps Google took to ensure it could readily track its customers, even though some employees pointed out concerns with such policies. Other documents have been redacted or sealed based on Schneider’s recommendation.
It is unclear what records or topics were involved in Google’s most recent motion to seal -listed as number 4- but Schneider is advising Thomason to keep something under seal. A redacted version of whatever Schneider believes should not be sealed will not be available until Thomason makes a formal ruling.
Brnovich alleges Google has violated the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act by leading users to believe they can opt-out of location tracking. He contends the company “exploits other avenues to invade personal privacy…It’s nearly impossible to stop Google from tracking your movements without your knowledge or consent,” he said.
The AGO also contends Google is continuing to track and collect location information via a user’s WiFi connectivity.
“Google makes it so a user cannot opt out of this form of location tracking unless the user actually completely disables the WiFi functionality on his or her device…meaning the device cannot connect to the internet through WiFi,” the lawsuit now states. It also alleges location data can be obtained by Google even if a user’s Android phone is shut off.
According to court records, over 80% of Google’s 2019 revenues—$135 billion out of $161 billion total—came from advertising enabled by the company’s collection of detailed information about its users, including their physical locations. Thomason ordered Google last month to continue its “reasonable, good faith investigation into what documents or materials it has with respect to profits from the Arizona user location data.”
Google has issued few public statements in response to the lawsuit. The most recent noted the company is looking forward to setting the record straight about its activities.
“The Attorney General has gone out of his way to mischaracterize our services,” according to the statement. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data.”
Some of the Google documents obtained by the AGO played a big role in legal action taken against the company in Australia.
Officials with the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission are seeking an unspecified amount of civil penalties against Google after a judge ruled earlier this year that the company led users who were setting up new Android devices to believe only the “location history” setting allowed location information to be tracked.
The Australian judge determined Google knew it could still collect a user’s location data without their knowledge via a default setting under “web & app activity,” even if the location history setting was turned off.
With states still feeling the economic damage done by the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden signed the “American Rescue Plan Act” to give states billions of federal dollars to help them recover. But there’s a catch: The Act effectively prohibits states that take the money from cutting taxes through 2024. That’s unconstitutional—and the Goldwater Institute is joining one legal challenge to it.
Congress can sometimes put conditions on grants to states, but it can’t take advantage of an emergency to coerce states into giving up control of such an important issue of state policy, and it can’t impose a condition on a grant that has nothing to do with the grant’s purpose. That’s why many state attorneys general have filed federal lawsuits challenging this “Tax Mandate”—and it’s why the Goldwater Institute has filed a brief supporting the state of Ohio’s challenge.
THE TAX MANDATE
A provision in the Act says that states cannot use federal grant money to “directly or indirectly offset” a loss of revenue resulting from a tax cut enacted between March 2021 and the end of 2024. If they do, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury will take the federal money back, up to the amount of revenue the state lost. That appears to mean that states that cut taxes between now and 2024 will have to pay back some or all their grant money.
The Tax Mandate’s defenders say this is just to make sure states actually use federal money for COVID relief. But the Tax Mandate doesn’t actually do that. The Act lists four broad categories of things a state can spend federal grant money on. After states spend the money, they have to report how they spent it to the Treasury Secretary. If the Secretary determines that a state spent money on something that doesn’t fall into one of those categories, she can take that money back.
So if a state receives a grant of, say, $5 billion, it has to show that it spent $5 billion on things the Act allows. If some things it reports weren’t appropriate uses of the money, the Secretary can recoup that portion of the grant. That alone ensures that states spend their federal grants for the purposes Congress intended.
The Tax Mandate, on the other hand, does not help ensure that states spend their grant money properly. Instead, it focuses on whether a state indirectly used federal funds to offset revenue lost as a result of tax cuts. That might make sense if the Act were otherwise designed to deny federal money to states that could afford to pay for their own COVID relief (if they put other policy priorities aside). But the Act doesn’t do that.
Representative Ruben Gallego’s (D-AZ-07) falsely accused previous President Donald Trump of using police to clear protesters for a photo op last June, per the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) final report. Gallego wasn’t the only one – he rode the same bandwagon as many of the mainstream media outlets. The DOI published their report on Wednesday.
According to the report, officers were attempting to install more fencing to guard against the onslaught of Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters. Their attempts to clear the protesters had no connection to Trump’s visit. In fact, the report says, officers began clearing the area hours before they knew of Trump’s visit.
DOI Inspector General (IG) Mark Lee Greenblatt issued a press release accompanying the report. Greenblatt clarified that this report would be “the first of a number of projects” to examine all that occurred from an operational perspective the day of the incident, June 1. Those projects would assess how the U.S. Park Police (USPP) and other law enforcement decided to clear the park and acted upon those plans.
“The evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install antiscale fencing in response to the destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and 31,” said Greenblatt, in reference to the BLM riots over George Floyd’s death on those days. “Moreover, the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day. As such, we determined that the evidence did not support a finding that USPP cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” (emphasis added)
Greenblatt acknowledged that officers did fail to provide “loud enough” dispersal warnings and exit directions to the protesters. He added that individual use-of-force incidents are subject to separate investigations and ongoing lawsuits.
It is unclear why it took a year and several days to complete this report.
Following the Congressional hearing about the incident last July, reporters asked Gallego if the hearing offered more transparency or left him with more questions. Gallego was confident that Trump attacked the protestors purposefully and accused him of pushing “one big cover-up” onto the public.
“I’m not confused at all – to be honest, I actually feel even more satisfied to know that this was a preplanned operation to incite violence and to initiate violence against peaceful protesters in order for the President to have his photo op,” said Gallego.
WATCH: National Guard officer contradicts Barr’s account of clearing protesters from Lafayette Square during racial protests.@RepRubenGallego: “I’m not confused at all. … This was a preplanned operation to incite violence.” pic.twitter.com/eqpDXK30Of
Later, during the Congressional hearing, Gallego also accused officers and officials testifying of telling “lies and excuses.” In a Facebook and Twitter posting, Gallego is seen in a video accusing USPP Acting Chief Gregory Monahan of attacking peaceful protesters. Monahan responded repeatedly that officers had based their response on the level of violence that had been occurring.
“U.S. Park Police’s actions in Lafayette Square on June 1 were unprofessional and unconstitutional. I would never have been permitted to behave that way with civilians when serving in Iraq – particularly for a photo op,” wrote Gallego. “Today’s testimony was full of lies and excuses. We need accountability.”
Gallego has yet to issue a response concerning his false accusation.
Corinne Murdock is a contributing reporter for AZ Free News. In her free time, she works on her books and podcasts. Follow her on Twitter, @CorinneMurdock or email tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com.
